


Disaster Born

by sangguinne



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (ha ha get it), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Desolation Avatar Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Gen, M/M, Post-The Unknowing (The Magnus Archives), Slow Burn, Spoilers Up To End of S3, suicide ideation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:35:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27566110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sangguinne/pseuds/sangguinne
Summary: He is lying on charred ground, ash-strewn and desolate. There’s nothing for perhaps fifty metres around him, but beyond that he can make out the husks of buildings. Bricks, rubble, melted frames of what must have once been cars, or buses, or homes. Tim swallows. He stands up on shaky feet.There was no way their little plastic explosives did this. This was something else; something much more devastating, destructive. This was Tim. He did this.
Relationships: Basira Hussain & Tim Stoker, Elias Bouchard & Tim Stoker, Eventual Tim Stoker/Jonathon "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood & Tim Stoker
Comments: 27
Kudos: 60





	1. i

**Author's Note:**

> Title from House Fires by Ada Limón
> 
> _Wickedness has leaked into the home I made,  
>  and I want to burn it down. Sister, tell me_
> 
> _how you stand the murderous fury. You there  
>  still singing, I crave demolishing, to eat explosives.  
> How could I have imagined this? Mortal me,  
> brutal disaster born out of so much greed._

Tim wakes up and the world is burning. For what could be seconds or hours, he is blind to every sense except the feeling of _heat_ ; heat like claws across his skin, heat like agony crawling through his veins, heat like he’ll never be able to feel anything else ever again. He can’t even scream-- his lungs are blackened and charred, his throat is a burnt husk. The pain is so searing he should pass out from it, he’s sure he should die from it, he begs desperately to every God he’s never believed in to please die from it, please die from it, please, please, plea-

And all of a sudden, it’s gone. The pain simply stops. 

The world continues to burn. The flames persist, crawling across his skin, burning through his insides, but it doesn’t… 

He can’t think. He can’t remember. He can’t understand. Slowly, gradually, his eyes open. Above him is an endless stretch of dark-grey sky. The light is the diffusive blue of a sunless sky; it is pre-dawn. It is mid-summer. Timothy Stoker is dead.

He puts his (burning) hands to the (burning) ground and pushes himself up into a sitting position, stiff and strange and stunned. His fingers clench into the dry earth, and sensation returns to him slowly: the chalkiness of the soil, fine and powdered, clinging to him like dirt shouldn’t. He looks down and sees it’s ash. He looks down and see the back of his hand, familiar, familiar (burning?), but… devoid of its usual, familiar pock-marked scars. And the rest of his body: naked, coated in ash, skin smooth where it should be scored. And all at once everything comes back to him. 

The heat. The Institute. The heat. The House of Wax. The heat. _The Unknowing._ The heat. 

Something leaves his throat that could be a sound, could be a gasp. 

The heat. Nikola Orsinov. The heat. Danny. The heat. Jon. The heat. _Jon._

“ _Fuck_ ,” he chokes out, and coughs out of lungs that shouldn’t exist. Lungs that should have blown up. Lungs that should have burnt up. 

Tim died. Tim knows he died. He doesn’t know how he’s so sure, but he’s sure. 

He squeezes his eyes shut, gasping in lungful after lungful of air, feeling his chest expand and contract. There’s no pain now ( _how is there no pain?_ ) but he remembers it. It could only have been the briefest of seconds, but he remembers agony that lasted… that _lasted._ The agony of fire. Of burning. Tears spring to his eyes, but as soon as they spill over onto his cheeks, they sizzle, like water off the bottom of a searing pan. He hears it, can feel it, and it feels… terrifying. Good. Terrifying. _Good_. 

“What the fuck is happening to me?” he whispers, pressing his fingers to his dry cheeks. There are dots that could connect. On some level, he’s sure he already understands. He is lying on charred ground, ash-strewn and desolate. There’s nothing for perhaps fifty metres around him, but beyond that he can make out the husks of buildings. Bricks, rubble, melted frames of what must have once been cars, or buses, or homes. Tim swallows. He stands up on shaky feet. 

There was no way their little plastic explosives did this. This was something else; something much more devastating, destructive. This was Tim. He did this. He stumbles after a couple of steps and falls to the ground. His bare knees smart-- so he can still feel pain, at least of that kind. He picks himself back up and walks through the barrenness, and then the wreckage, and then ducks under the yellow police tape beyond that. In these early, early hours, the streets are completely devoid of people, the streetlights still casting their halogen glows into the hazy blueness. Still, he avoids the streets and walks around the nearest house, silently opening the back gate to let himself into the garden. 

The dew is wet against his bare feet, but not cold. He notes the information, and files it away. It takes him a couple of gardens to find a washing line with clothes still hanging off it, and he quickly dresses. Then he walks up to the unlit back of the house, trying first the door, and then, finding it locked, the window next to it. It opens, and he quietly pulls himself through. He lands softly in a carpeted dining room, bathed in gradually lightening shadows. Light reflects off the framed pictures on the walls, and in the centre of the room is a large, hardwood table. As Tim walks past it, he trails his fingers against the polished surface. 

Under his skin: an itch. He pulls his hand away, and moves towards the front of the house. He finds what he is looking for in a bowl by the front door: keys and a leather wallet. He pulls on the shoes by the front door, unlocks the front door, and finds the car standing in the driveway. Just as he is getting into the car, however, something soft brushes against the back of his hand. He looks down and sees the potted flowers, an entire bush of pale pinkish roses. He cam’t help but reach out to stroke them. Something pleasant flushes through his veins. It spreads through his whole body, and he shivers. Shuts his eyes. 

Afterwards, Tim gets into the car and drives away, just as the first rays of sun begin to paint themselves, golden-orange, across the sky. Below, almost like a little reflection of the sky, the rosebush burns. 

\---

There had been no apocalypse. The world, aside from within fifty metres proximity to Tim, carried on. Those mannequins, the Stranger, whatever had gotten Danny all those years ago, it was gone. They had succeeded. And yet, Tim was still here. 

And yet, Tim was still here, and Jon was dead. Tim didn’t know what had happened to Basira, or Daisy, but he had been next to Jon, had argued with him, had fought him, had… 

_“I am not losing you too!”_

Had forgotten him, for a while, seen other people’s faces displacing that familiar, irritating face. Had hated him, for his cruelty, for not trying to save those people. It seems almost laughable now. Had… not forgiven him. For anything. For everything.

 _“You can’t even save_ him _!”_

Had not saved him. 

Tim’s hands clench on the steering wheel. It’s coming up to 8am, and he’s nearing London. The date on the dashboard reads 9th August-- there’s a missing day, but Tim won’t go chasing those memories. They contain only a type of pain he imagines he’ll never feel again. The fire won’t hurt him anymore. 

But Tim hurts, regardless. Something inside him feels empty. Untethered. Wild. He doesn’t really know why he’s going back to the Institute. Perhaps he still feels compelled. Perhaps he just doesn’t know what else to do, or where to go. 

He pulls into the car park but leaves the car in the middle of the bays. Something about the sight of that old, miserable building is grating, is tearing at his nerves. He grits his teeth, and all but falls out of the car. The closer he gets to the entrance, those stupid marble steps, the harder it gets to concentrate, to even see. All he can think of are the past few months- the past year, really- the misery, the bitterness, the isolation, the anger, the _anger_. This place has wrapped him in iron chains and refused to let go. This place has torn his world apart. This place has destroyed him. 

_“Tim?”_

Tim almost doesn’t hear him past the blood pounding in his ears. He snaps his head round and- there he is. 

“Oh my god- Tim? How can- what- _Tim?”_ Martin is standing halfway down the steps of the Institute, a light jacket pulled on against the early morning chill. His hair is a mess and he looks like he hasn’t slept in weeks. He’s holding a dossier in his hands. Tim doesn’t answer, and Martin breaks out of his stupor and comes running over. He reaches out, almost as if to check if Tim’s real, but aborts the action quickly. “How can- Tim, we thought, I mean, we were told you had- had-” 

“Apparently not,” Tim says, trying to keep his voice even. Martin looks so- confused? Concerned? Relieved? Terrified? “Is Elias in?” 

Martin’s face seems to panic, for a second, before he quickly shakes his head. 

“Um, yeah, but he’s- Tim, I’d love to- I mean, I’m so, _so_ glad you’re alright, and I want to hear what happened, but I really have to hurry before Elias-”

“What’s in that?” Tim asks, gesturing to the dossier Martin is clutching to his chest. Martin seems to be in conflict with himself for a second, before he finally holds it out for Tim to take. Tim opens it to see a single tape-recorder. “A statement?”

“It’s um… 0170216-B. I’m taking it to the police. We can’t have him in the Institute anymore, and if I don’t do this then Melanie might do something drastic,” Martin whispers, squeezing his hands together- that nervous tick he has, that he’d do all the time when they were trapped in Michael’s corridors together. Tim is reminded of that time, and with it come the unbidden memories of terror, and betrayal, and Martin’s refusal to acknowledge that shared trauma. Just like Jon’s refusal to acknowledge their getting eaten alive by worms together. Just like the way they never talked about what happened to Sasha, and like the millions of other ways no one in this godforsaken place was there for him, or for each other. All the ways they were all so selfish and cruel, and all the ways it would be better if it just burnt down, and then they would all be free. 

“T-Tim? Your hand-”

“Drastic? You mean like killing him?” Tim does not recognize his own voice. Martin looks uneasy. 

“I mean it wouldn’t solve- I mean, not just that she might really, really do it, but also that we’d all die too, and Jon-” 

“Would that be so bad?” 

Martin is shocked silent. 

“Would it? Martin?” Tim feels that same rush from earlier, but this is different. His hands are shaking. He feels like the anger in his chest might burst out. He feels like it’ll be replaced with something like satisfaction. “To finally kill that bastard. For everything he’s done to us. For everything he made us suffer through. For everything he made Sasha and Jon suffer through. To finally be _free_.” 

“Tim, what- what are you doing?” Martin takes a step back, then another. The terror on his face is plain, now. “Tim, stop… stop!” 

But it’s too late. Tim’s rage is pulsing through his veins, is flooding his head. The dossier goes up in flames, the plastic tape melting into a thick, black sludge. It drips onto the pavement. Martin looks horrified, devastated. Tim feels a rush. 

“Don’t you dare put that man somewhere I can’t get my hands on him.” 


	2. ii

“You did die,” Martin says. His voice sounds eerily empty. Tim shakes his hand out, the last bits of ash fluttering to the ground. He’s momentarily enraptured by the flames that dwindle away to nothing around his hand, before he tears his gaze away and focuses on Martin’s face. Martin is looking at the black sludge on the ground, until he takes a deep breath and looks back at Tim. “Tim did die, didn’t he?” 

“I’m still Tim, Martin, come on,” Tim replies, smiling. It’s the look in Martin’s pretty blue eyes, the smouldering seethe in them, that fills Tim with delight. He can feel Martin’s rousing temper like heating air around a fire. “But I’m not playing his games anymore. You shouldn’t try to stop me. Elias was in, did you say?”

Tim starts towards the Institute’s doorway, his whole body humming with… _something_. Something pleasant, something powerful. He can’t wait to get his hands on something else, something worse. Elias’ neck. Elias’ skin. Elias’ eyes. 

“He’ll see you coming, you know,” Martin shouts after him. “Melanie was distracting him, but there’s no way he’ll miss you now.” Tim laughs. 

He throws open the doors to the institute. It’s still early, and there aren’t many people around. The energy in this place crawls across his skin, and he hates it, he hates it. The feeling of eyes following him, the feeling of distrust and paranoia. It’s familiar, and he thinks of all those months he blamed Jon, _hated_ Jon for so much as looking at him, talking to him, even daring to exist in his proximity. For all the ways he dragged Tim into this mess, when he could have lived out the rest of his life dealing with his trauma in perfectly human ways.

(Never moving on, estranging himself from his parents, never making meaningful connections, never trusting anyone with anything, never letting himself care or be cared for). 

_(“I am not losing you too!”)_

He doesn’t regret it, but it boils his blood that Elias is probably calmly sitting in his office, watching Tim make his way through the institute, while Jon is dead. Elias should be dead too. Tim should be dead too. 

He bursts through the door to Elias’ office and half expects to find it empty. He’s never been happier to be wrong.

“Nice to see you back,” Elias smiles blithely. He sits behind his desk in his usual office chair, posture relaxed and comfortable. He holds a statement in one hand, the other resting casually under his chin. He looks the very picture of nonchalance. His eyes flit to Tim’s; they glimmer. 

“You-”

“So he was telling the truth.” Tim hadn’t even noticed her in the room. Melanie stands in front of Elias’ desk, blocking his path. A knife gleams in her hand. “You really are one of them now, aren’t you?”

“I thought you wanted him dead too,” Tim grits out. His hands are shaking. He can only keep his eyes on Melanie for a second before they zero back onto Elias. The bastard doesn’t seem bothered in the slightest. Does he think Tim is just here for a chat? A ‘hey, I’m back, heard there’s a new vacancy up for the taking’? 

He doesn’t see when Melanie springs forward, her knife held out in front of her, so he only just manages to avoid getting sliced across the neck like she’d been originally aiming for. Instead, it cuts through his upper shoulder. He yells in pain and jolts backwards.

“You think you can just walk away from an explosion unscathed and expect we’ll not notice?” There’s a crazed look in her eyes that Tim hadn’t noticed before. Or perhaps it’s just easier to identify next to the now-bloodied knife held firmly in her grip. She keeps her eyes on him even as she talks to Elias. “Wish I could say I was sorry for the blood on your carpet, Elias. Just count yourself lucky it’s not yours yet.” 

“You’re _protecting_ him?” Tim is so bewildered, for a moment, that the fact that she just attacked him with a knife seems of secondary importance. “ _You’re_ protecting _Elias_?”

“I am not protecting him! I just don’t want any more fucked up _things_ like him or, apparently, _you_ , running around doing whatever they want! Besides,” she says, getting ready to pounce again, “If anyone’s going to hurt this creep, it’s going to be me.” 

But Tim doesn’t care about her anymore. His eyes are once again focused on Elias, on the way he’s holding the statement over his mouth to cover his expression. It makes no difference- his eyes are narrowed in clear, quiet mirth. He’s been silent the whole time Melanie was talking, and Tim suddenly understands. Elias thinks he’s safe. Elias thinks he’s convinced Melanie that Tim’s the enemy, that she’ll either take him out, or that they’ll take care of each other. Either way, Elias will remain untouched. 

Oh, Elias is so _certain_ . Oh, Tim wants to watch him _burn_. 

He’s distantly aware of Melanie’s sudden gasp, but mostly he’s focusing on Elias’ face: the slightest twitch of his brows, the almost imperceptible widening of his eyes. Tim takes a step forward, and Melanie physically recoils. It is an early morning in midsummer, but the temperature in the room climbs and climbs and climbs. 

“Tim,” says Elias, as Tim gets closer, as Melanie throws herself out of his way. Tim can see the sweat beading at the other man’s forehead now, can see the way he’s moving his body back, to try to put as much distance between them as he can. Tim cocks his head to the side, breathing in the gently rising smell of smoke in the air. “Tim, I wouldn’t do this if I were you.” 

“Or what? You’ll send me to my death again?” Elias makes to get up, but Tim reaches out and grabs the edge of his leather chair, inches from his face. He feels the material start to melt beneath his fingers; the fire alarm goes off. Elias still doesn’t look scared though-- he just looks mildly inconvenienced. The expression on his face makes Tim’s blood boil. 

“I really hadn’t wanted it to come to this,” Elias says, but something about his voice is… off. “You know what comes next.” The steadily building fuzz of white noise gets louder and louder until it drowns out everything else, until it’s all Tim can hear. There’s a moment where all his senses are so overwhelmed that he feels disembodied, removed from reality. It feels like he’s been taken back to the moment he pressed the detonator. 

And then, suddenly, terror. 

Terror so potent it’s paralyzing. Terror and confusion and _pain_ . He thinks he might have fallen to the floor, he thinks he might be screaming, but he doesn’t _know_ . He doesn’t know anything, in this moment, can’t remember _himself_ separate from the agony crawling across his bones, over his skin… on his skin, under his skin, his skin, his _skin._

He can feel his skin as, inch by inch, it peels off his bones. 

“I’d hoped to spare you from this, but I suppose I should have seen that it was inevitable,” comes Elias’ voice, somehow distorted and far away but also echoing deafeningly inside his skull. “Your brother really did suffer, didn’t he? Hard to imagine someone would choose this for themselves, but I guess it must run in the famil-”

The pain is gone as soon as it comes-- or maybe it’s not gone at all, but Tim simply does not notice it anymore, beyond the all-consuming rage. It surges through him, and when he opens his eyes to see the bottom of Elias’ desk, it’s on fire. His hands are on the carpet, on fire, and when he pushes himself off the ground to see Elias staring, wide-eyed, from where he’s now stood in the open doorway, Tim can see that the whole room is aflame. 

“You tried to use Danny’s pain.” The words feel like spitting coals, burning from the throat up. The tear tracks evaporated a while ago, but Tim still swipes at his cheeks. His hands, on fire, shake. “You _cunt._ ” 

Elias runs. The door slams shut behind him, but explodes into a thousand burning pieces when Tim throws it open. He starts chasing him down the corridor, certain he can get to him before he escapes. The flames are raging around him, and with his anger blistering through his bloodstream, Tim feels so much more alive than he’s felt in years. 

And then he notices the gas. It’s a strange sensation- it’s a horrible sensation- because he doesn’t see it, but rather feels it. It feels like-- suffocation. It feels like he’s being choked, smothered, but at the same time like his blood is being drained through a surgically efficient cut, losing gallons by the second. He only manages to make it as far as the top of the stairs before he collapses against the wall, gasping for breath. The fire has been zapped from him, and he feels like he’s going to choke to death. 

The firefighters find him there, looking inches from death. The building has been evacuated and the fires are being put out, one by one. One of them reaches out to help him, but as soon as her hand gets close, Tim slaps it away. 

“Get the fuck away from me,” he forces out, but it sounds weak even to his own ears. She doesn’t, keeps trying to push her way into his space, and he’s still so furious at Elias, so full of untempered rage, that he doesn’t even think to hold himself back. The firefighter grabs his arm, but pulls it back as if she’d been stung. She looks down at her glove, perplexed. 

“What is it?” the other firefighter asks. 

“He’s… hot?” He can’t help let out a snort at that, and she looks back at him, concerned. “Sir, are you--”

“Okay?” He reaches out and grabs her arm. She gasps in pain, but he doesn’t let go. “Not really, no.” Her face is screwed up in fear and pain, and it… feels good. He looks into her eyes and watches, rapt, as the confusion morphs into fear and then terror. The material of her fire-retardant suit stays unharmed, but he knows the temperature inside is rapidly rising. Sweat gathers around her face, and she keeps trying to pull her arm away, but he holds on, feeling his weakness wane away. 

“Let go, let…” Her words fumble until she isn’t speaking anymore, just crying out in pain. The sound sets his blood alight, and he finds himself grinning. He can’t hear his own thoughts over the euphoria taking him over. He doesn’t even know if he has any. 

The other firefighter, confused, equally terrified, finally tries to step in, but as he moves towards Tim, the fires around them once again begin to flourish. The woman passes out in her suit, and Tim still doesn’t want to let her go. The material under his hand is finally starting to soften. He wants to watch it wither against his fire. He wants to melt someone’s skin, but he can’t remember whose. It doesn't matter. He just needs to feel it, he _needs_ to--

He doesn’t notice the third firefighter behind him, holding a solid metal extinguisher, before she slams it against the back of his head. His vision immediately goes black.


	3. iii

Tim is lulled awake in a way he hasn’t been since he was still a child. He opens his eyes to the soft grey material of a car’s headliner, and realises he’s lying in a backseat. He tries to move, and immediately groans. His head, his joints, his whole body, aches. 

“What the fuck,” he groans, pushing himself into a sitting position. His muscles protest like they’ve been stiff for hours, which is probably accurate. He’s far too tall for a backseat, and he’s sure whoever put him here shoved his limbs into whatever spaces were available. 

“T-Tim, you’re awake.” He looks up to see Martin in the driver’s seat, who glances back through the rearview mirror once, quickly, before refocusing on the road. Like before, his hair is a mess and his clothes are rumpled. 

“I’m-”

“Please, before you start, let me speak this time,” Martin sighs, and he sounds tired, but also kind of fed up, “Yes, you’re in my car. I had to-- I-- didn’t know what to do with you. They’d dragged you into the back of an ambulance, but there was nothing-- I mean, there wasn’t even a scratch on you, right? Nevermind a burn! And I was worried they might-- I mean-- I…” 

He trails off. Tim raises his eyebrows. 

“Did you steal my body from the back of an ambulance and drag me into the backseat of your car?” Martin makes an embarrassed noise, and Tim has an urge to laugh. Not… bitterly, or mockingly, but just to… laugh. It’s a nice feeling. 

“Don’t-- say it like that! I was  _ worried _ , okay? I didn’t want them to start… poking and prodding you, or whatever! And Elias was nowhere to be seen, and after what you--”

The very mention of Elias is enough to take him back, all of a sudden, to everything that had happened. Tim sucks in a breath, feeling the rush of anger through his veins. 

“-- tried to do to the archives, I thought he might… Jesus Christ Tim!” The alarm in Martin’s voice pulls his attention away from thoughts of Elias’ self-satisfied smile enough that Tim realises why Martin sounds so panicked. The temperature in the car has suddenly shot several degrees, and Tim looks down to see the faintest wisps of smoke beginning to permeate out of his palms. “Tim! Stop that!”

“I’m going to hunt him down. That-- do you know what he did, do you know what he tried to-” Tim cuts himself off but only because he can’t talk anymore without his voice shaking in rage. Martin glances back again, before quickly winding the window down. The car is so old that it’s a manual crank, the stiff glass getting stuck halfway down. Martin curses under his breath, before glancing back at Tim.

“Tim!” he yells, “Listen, I know you’re angry! I’m angry too! I’m sure whatever he did to you was the same as what he did to me! But  _ please  _ don’t burn my car down, it’s literally the only material possession I have left!” 

His pleading doesn’t have the desired effect on Tim, which does not go unnoticed by either of them. Martin really, really cares about his piece of shit car. Tim hadn’t known this, but in this moment, he can feel it. Martin really wants to protect this car, and Tim, consequently, desperately wants to blaze it to a charred lump. It's not a conscious desire, or one he has any control over. He just… wants to. The temperature rises another couple degrees. 

“Tim!” Martin shrieks. He sounds exasperated, almost, and it does make Tim burst out laughing, this time. “Don’t laugh at me! And stop doing that! I really don’t care if you’re all… fire incarnate, arson-man, or whatever, now, just please don’t kill us in my goddamn car!”

This time, Tim makes an active effort to rein himself in, and the temperature starts inching back down again. Martin lets out a breath in relief. It’s short-lived.

“But you know when I kill him it won’t matter anyway, right?” Tim says, leaning backwards to recline against his seat, “We’re all going to die alongside him.” 

Martin is silent for a couple of seconds, as the car pulls to a stop at a red light. They are very much still in London, though edging towards the residential areas, so Tim must not have actually been passed out for very long. 

“You don’t get to decide that for all of us,” Martin finally says, as the car starts moving again. Tim makes to cut him off, but Martin boulders on, “He put my mother’s memories into my head, when I was distracting him. I’m sure he did something similar to you. I’m sure you know how horrible that was. I  _ let  _ him do that, so that Melanie could get that tape that you melted without a second thought. You’re not the only one suffering, Tim, and you can throw your own life away but you don’t get to sacrifice the rest of us.” 

“‘The rest of us’?” Tim scoffs, “What ‘rest of us’? You? Melanie?  _ Me _ ? Are we really worth it? At this point, after everything that’s happened, everyone who’s dead, are we really worth it?” 

Martin looks back at him, wide-eyed,.

“Tim--”

“If it means getting to make Elias suffer, I’ll do anything. It’s not like there’s much of us left to save anyway, right? Melanie’s half-way insane, I was already supposed to be dead. If Jon was still here… I… And even the pigs, at least, had some power to change something. To do something. But we’re just sitting ducks, we’re just-- waiting, for something to finally get us. I am  _ not  _ doing that. If I’m going down again, I’m taking Elias with me this time.”

“Jon’s not dead.” 

Tim is stopped short. 

"What?"

"Jon's not dead," Martin repeats, "He survived. He's in a coma, but he's very much alive."

Tim is lost for words. All the steam that felt like it was building up inside him, all the conviction and rage, just… seeps away. 

"Basira, too. That's actually-- um. But yeah, she managed to escape before the explosion. Daisy is the only one who- whose body they never found. And you, I guess, but that's… yeah." 

The silence that settles in the car then is deafening. Martin glances at him again, nervously, before quickly looking back at the road. 

"I would've told you earlier. I kind of forgot that you wouldn't know," he admits. 

"Where is he?" Tim finally asks. 

"In the hospital. He- he's alive? Um, his brain is definitely alive. Like super alive. But…"

" _ But _ ?" Tim doesn't understand the panic that rushes through him, all of a sudden.

"But the rest of him is, sort of, medically dead? He doesn’t breathe. He has no pulse, no heartbeat. But his brain is still fully, strongly active, so he's technically in a coma? Which is definitely not how comas work. Look, Tim…" Martin sighs, pushing his hand through his hair in what can only be a new nervous tick. It would explain the state of it. "I know things must seem insane. Believe me, I'm not exactly having a fantastic time of it all either, despite not being one of the apparently multiple people who came back from the dead. And I'm sorry if you're still mad at me, but… The doctors are leaving Jon alone because of Elias'... well I don't know whether it's another spooky power of his or just plain old posh-people connections. I didn't know whether he'd extend the same thing to you, after… well. I panicked, I had to get you away from there."

Tim is still reeling, feeling like he's recovering from a blow, when the car pulls into a cark park and stops in one of the bays. They're outside a block of flats. Martin turns off the car, unbuckles his seat belt, and turns around to look at him properly, straight on. In spite of the bags under his eyes and the tired pallor of his skin, he looks determined, serious. 

"And I'm sorry, also, but I cannot let you kill Elias. Not when it would kill Jon too. I don't care about me, and I was already mourning you. But I will not let Jon die. Do you understand?" 

Tim… does not understand. Tim was there, when Jon died. He knows what happened, despite everything the Stranger tried to do to to make that not the case. And if Jon is alive, now, in the way Martin says he is, that means Jon is no longer Jon in the same way Tim is no longer Tim. 

And Tim did not forgive Jon. Tim died still angry at Jon, and Jon died knowing and accepting that. It had been a natural culmination; a satisfying conclusion, if not a happy one. When Tim was the only loose string, the only one who hadn’t played his part, it had been easier to imagine him cutting himself off. Now, with Jon, there has been no ending. Tim is adrift. 

Martin is still looking at him expectantly. Tim pulls himself together, gathering up his scattered thoughts. He nods, once. Martin doesn’t look exactly convinced, but he lets it go, and gets out of the car. After a moment, Tim follows him. 

The block of flats looms over them, blocking out the mid-afternoon sunlight. The area is an okay one; it’s not exactly a picture-perfect residential neighbourhood, but there’s no graffiti scrawled across the walls or anything. He knows where Martin used to live, before Jane Prentiss and his consequent relocation to a back room of the archives, but this is not it. He has no idea who they could possibly be here for. Martin answers his questioning look by taking a deep breath, like he’s psyching himself up, and entering the building. 

Martin starts towards the lift before suddenly stopping. He glances at Tim, lets out a sigh, and then turns to the stairs. Tim does not know who he expects to answer when they knock on a door on the second floor.

“How did you get this address,” Basira says as soon as she opens the door, until she notices Tim standing just to the side, “...what the  _ fuck _ ?” 

“Wish I knew, to be honest,” Tim grins. When all else fails, a cheerful front. 

“Look, look, please don’t shut the door I-- we-- the institute isn’t safe, and I have no idea where else to go. Please, just let us in. I can explain once we’re inside,” Martin pleads. Basira looks back and forth between them suspiciously, and looks like she really is going to slam the door in their faces, but she eventually relents. 

“He’s dead,” is the first thing she says, once they’re inside. “He died. How is he here?” 

The room is warmly decorated, if a bit of a mess. There’s bookshelves all along one of the walls, and a sofa near the window. It has a pillow on one end and a blanket messily pushed aside. Tim walks over to it and sits down while Martin stands awkwardly in the middle of the room. 

“Um, Tim? I also would quite like to know?” Martin asks, turning to him. Tim rolls his eyes. 

“Like I said, wish I knew. I remember being next to Jon, and that fucking clown lady, and everything was confusing, but I remember enough to know I pushed the button on the detonator and the explosion went off. And then… I woke up.” He skips the vaguely accessible memories of burning. He would rather not try to think too hard about what his brain's trauma response has tried so hard to bury. 

"And Daisy? She wasn't there? When you pressed the detonator?" Basira asks. Basira has never struck him as an emotional person, but the intensity with which she is looking at him makes him wonder how much of her calm, collected front is a mask. 

“I don’t… I mean, she might have been? You were there Basira, you remember what it was like. For all I know, you were there when I detonated us too.”

“But you said you remember Jon being with you,” she points out, as if she’s picked out a hole in his argument. He just frowns at her, not following. 

“So?”

“ _ So _ , how did you know he was there? If it was as confusing for you as it was for me, then how did you know he was there too?” He doesn’t know when this became an interrogation, but Martin is looking at him curiously too. He feels suddenly self-conscious, sitting on the sofa while the both of them stand staring down at him. 

“I mean, I didn’t, for most of it. But then I saw Orsinov, and attacked her, but it was? But it was Jon? And… then there was Grimaldi? Or… Baldwin? And the detonator was in my hand. And I don’t know, I don’t… I couldn’t see him. So maybe he wasn’t there, at that point? But… but I definitely saw him. He was awake, from the Stranger’s mess. His eyes were doing that  _ thing _ , which is what I recognised, which is what snapped me out of it. And… and Orisinov said-”  _ You can’t even save  _ him _!  _ “I knew I was killing both of us, when I pressed it.” 

Silence. Basira’s face is back to being the mask of detached calm it always is. Martin is frowning down at the carpet. Tim doesn’t know why he feels so… tense. He thinks back to Jon in those last moments, when he could finally  _ see  _ him, his eyes all glowing and monstrous. That inhuman look Tim had distrusted, detested. He remembers the rush of relief that had passed through him, in that moment. Basira leaves the room. 

“You said he’s in a hospital?” Tim finally asks, once the silence gets too much. Once his own thoughts are getting too confusing. Martin, having worked through whatever was going on in his head, sinks into the armchair adjacent to the sofa. 

“Yeah. Barts. Elias has him in a private room,” Martin says. “Nobody has any idea when--  _ if _ \-- he’ll wake up. I was honestly convinced he wouldn’t until… well, until you showed up, I guess. It’s not the same though, I suppose.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’re… whatever Jude Perry is, right? Fire? And you both blew up. It makes sense that you might survive, but Jon… isn’t that.”

“Different classes of monsters, huh?” Tim tries to joke. It falls flat. Martin is about to say something, but his eyes go wide. From where he’s sat, he has a clear view of the door. 

“Basira?” His voice is a high-pitched squeak. Tim starts to turn around, but the sound of a gun cocking has him freezing in his tracks. 

“Don’t move,” Basira says, from behind him, “and give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you right here.” 

\---

  
  


Tim bursts out laughing. 

“Tim!” Martin squawks, at the same time Basira takes a step towards him. 

“Sorry, I just-- a gun?” Tim says, mocking, “You’re going to  _ shoot _ me? In your own flat? Where did you even get a gun in central London? I knew cops were unethical, but--”

Basira takes two more steps forward and then smacks him round the face with the butt of the gun. His head snaps to the side, slamming against the back of the sofa with a thud. The pain stings across the whole side of his face. He puts a hand up to his cheekbone; it comes away wet. 

“You said it yourself-- you’re not human anymore,” she says, still with that characteristic indifference, “You survived blowing up. You both show up at my door claiming the institute isn’t safe anymore, after you reappear. So, it follows that you must have done something to make that the case, which means you’re dangerous. You’re just one of them now. That’s enough to warrant putting you down, the way I see it.”

“Basira,” Martin says, standing up slowly, “Basira, please think about this.”

She glances at him once, before training her cold eyes back on Tim. Tim reaches for some sort of reaction: the fire, maybe, or even any emotion. All he finds is apathy. 

“We need him, Basira,” Martin says, sounding close to desperate, “Think about it. All those monsters are still out there, and we don’t have Daisy anymore.” 

Basira’s head snaps to him. Her mask of indifference seems to slip, for a second. 

“We need protection still! Those monsters will still keep coming after us! And I don’t know about you, but I haven’t forgotten about the fear-god apocalypses that are still going to keep happening! We stopped one, and it cost us Daisy--”

“Stop talking about her like she’s dead.” Basira finally snaps. Martin blinks, confused. “You heard him, she wasn’t in the room with him when it happened.”

“I mean, I did say she might have been,” Tim pipes up. They both ignore him.

“I’m sorry, but we can’t count on that. And the more important thing is she isn’t here right now, so she can’t help us,” Martin says. Tim is surprised, somewhat, at how matter-of-fact he sounds. He’s even more surprised at the way Martin has moved to position himself between Basira and Tim, almost protectively. “But Tim can. And we still need to stop the apocalypses.” 

There are a few moments of tense silence, before Basira finally backs off. She collapses into the armchair Martin had been sitting in. 

“Fine,” she finally says, “Make yourselves at home, I guess.” 

Martin continues to watch her for a moment, just in case, before he finally moves from in front of Tim. Basira looks so, so tired, and it feels like less of a resolution than a momentary ceasefire. The silence that settles between the three of them is incredibly awkward, until Martin claps his hands together, loud and abrupt. 

“Great!” he says, forced joviality pushed into his voice, “I’ll get started on dinner then!” Tim considers trying to strike up conversation with Basira, but before he can she speaks up.

“Just so you know, I don’t trust you,” she says, “One wrong move and I’m putting you down.” 

“I’m so glad you let me know! You were throwing up some mixed signals with the gun and all,” he smiles, raising his hand to the cut on his cheek. To his surprise, however, the skin there is completely smooth and healed over. She stares pointedly at it, narrowing her eyes. He shoots her a wink and gets up to follow Martin into the kitchen.

He finds him with his back towards the door, standing in front of a chopping board and cutting something up. Tim can’t help the immediate desire to make him jump; he quietly sneaks up behind him and leans in next to his ear. 

“What’re you making?” he asks. Martin screams, and jumps about a foot in the air. Tim laughs so hard he bends over with it, grasping the countertop to keep his balance, while Martin flushes a deep, deep red, sputtering and embarrassed. 

“I was holding a knife!” he shrieks, putting it down. He turns to Tim, and Tim can tell he’s trying to look angry but all he manages is deeply flustered. It makes Tim laugh more. 

“You’re adorable,” he snickers, wiping the tears from his eyes. Martin, somehow, gets even more red, though it really doesn’t seem possible. He harrumphs, and turns back to his vegetables. 

“You are a menace and I hate you,” he says, grumpy, “And if you’re going to be here you could at least help me.” Tim nods, his cheeks still hurting from the laughing fit. “Go wash those tomatoes.” 

“You got it, boss,” Tim grins, before faltering. The nickname had just slipped out, completely unconsciously. Martin blinks at him, and Tim quickly turns away from whatever look he’s giving him. He takes the tomatoes to the sink, and the new, slightly weighted silence is terrible. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Jon,” Martin says, after a couple of seconds. “I really did forget, I--”

“I really don’t want to have this conversation,” Tim says. He has been washing these tomatoes for far too long. Martin doesn’t let it go, though. 

“I guess it was kind of new for me too, though? There was a day there when both of you were confirmed dead, before they hooked Jon’s body up to the machines in the hospital and noticed his brain waves. But for that day I’d lost you both. I was completely alone, and I…” He trails off into silence. The sounds of cutting start up again. Tim doesn’t know what to say. He stares at his hands under the still-running water, and wonders if his fingers can still become water-pruned. He takes a deep breath and turns the tap off. 

“I’m sorry,” he finally says, “I… yeah. That must have been miserable. I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

“You don’t have to apologize!” Martin is quick to jump in, “It’s not like it was your fault. I- I’m sorry, I’m being such a dick, you’re the one that literally died, I--” He cuts himself off with a gasp. Tim turns, confused, to see Martin staring at him in dismay. “Oh,  _ Tim _ .” 

“Wh--?” And all of a sudden Martin is in his space, and Tim is being engulfed into a bear hug. They’re basically the same height, but somehow Martin still manages to swamp him, his arms warm and powerful around his torso. Tim sputters, lost, still holding the dripping tomatoes awkwardly in the air. He tries to speak, but all that comes out is a dazed puff of air.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to-- Oh my god, argh,” Martin says, squeezing tighter. It is maybe the coziest hug Tim has ever received. Mortifyingly, he can feel his own face beginning to heat up. “Please don’t cry, I’m so sorry, I’m okay, Jon’s okay, we’re all--”

“Cry?” Tim wheezes, baffled, “I’m not…? Huh?” Martin thankfully (terribly) pulls back, though he doesn’t let go completely. Tim gracelessly moves a wrist, still holding a tomato, to his cheeks, and realises with a start that they’re wet. With tears. “What the fuck?” 

Martin is looking confused now too, his eyebrows creased, until his eyes suddenly go wide and he looks back at where he’d been working. Tim follows his gaze to the chopping board and sees it at the same moment: the half-cut onion. 

Martin lets go, and Tim misses the warmth immediately.

“Oh my god,” Martin says, a hand over his mouth, and he looks embarrassed, but also like… “Oh my god, onions? You still cry at cut onions?” And then Tim realises he’s holding a hand over his mouth because he’s trying to hide his laughter, which doesn’t matter because a moment later he’s fully laughing. He’s laughing at Tim, who is still standing in the middle of the kitchen holding a tomato in either hand. 

“What do you mean ‘still’! How do you not!” Tim yells, aware of the colour on his own face not fading at all. He feels the wetness begin to evaporate, and the smell of tomato sauce starts spreading through the room. Which is…

“Tim!” Martin yells, lunging towards him, “Tim, you’re  _ burning the tomatoes! _ ” 


	4. iv

Tim is woken up to the offensively loud ringtone of his new phone going off. He groans, reaching across the bed to the little plastic piece of shit Basira begrudgingly went out and bought for him last night and hits answer. It’s Martin, hushed and muffled-sounding like he’s hiding in some broom closet.

“Elias isn’t at the Institute,” is the first thing he says. Tim rubs his eyes, looking around at the messy room. There’s only one bedroom in Basira’s flat, and she had been adamant he and Martin take the bed which, going by the state of the sofa, she's apparently not been sleeping on for a couple of days anyway. He remembers Martin’s adorable awkwardness when they were getting into the double bed together the night before, but the man is conspicuously absent right now. 

“But you are? What time is it?” 

“Did you just wake up? It’s like mid-afternoon Tim,” Martin sounds kind of exasperated but mostly amused, “I guess you must have been tired from coming back to life and all. Anyway, yes I’m here, I do still work here, and the important thing is that  _ Elias _ isn’t here and-- and  _ Peter Lukas _ is here instead, saying Elias appointed him temporary head of the institute? I guess you must have… scared him?” A thrill of satisfaction runs through Tim at the idea that he scared Elias enough to run away. 

“Peter Lukas? Of the--”

“Yeah, exactly. I don’t know. He’s… weird. But um, Basira seems more focused than she has been. I think what you said about Daisy has.. revitalised her, or something. And the main reason I’m calling is-- Melanie is-- even if Elias isn’t here, Melanie is, and she’s kind of really pissed off at you? So I guess maybe keep away from the Institute anyway?” There’s a rustle of fabric, and some more muffled noise, like he’s talking quietly to someone else, before he comes back, “Listen, I have to go, but, for the love of God,  _ please _ don’t burn Basira’s flat down.” And then he hangs up.

Tim, sitting up in the bed, considers it for a second. There’s plenty of flammable things in the room: the bedsheets, the curtains, the books. He’s aware of all of them, of the carbon of them, the way they could go up in billows of smoke in his hands. He doesn’t feel any… pull, though. There’s no hunger, no bristle of desire, like there had been in Martin’s car. Like there had been when Martin had handed him that tape, yesterday morning. Like there had been when he’d looked into Elias’ gleaming, gloating eyes. He wonders about that, for a couple of seconds. 

Eventually, he gets up and gets dressed. Basira’s flat is surprisingly messy, for someone as methodical and disciplined as her. It crosses his mind that she might have shared it with someone. He wanders through the bedroom, the bathroom, the kitchen. Trails his fingers along decorative ornaments (a vase, a little elephant, a wooden sculpture) and the spines of books neatly lined up on the shelves. Every now and then he feels a tug, one object or other gently calling out for him, but he’s yet to feel that desperate pull. That desire. Still, he picks up a mug from the kitchen and holds it, curiously. After a moment, it starts liquifying in his hands. It slips between his fingers and dribbles to the floor. A flutter of happiness runs through him, and he laughs in delight. 

He places his hand on the countertop and watches the scorch marks as they appear, like paint staining a blank canvas. He goes to turn the kettle on, by habit, and then pauses, considers, places his hands on the metal surface. A couple of seconds later, the water starts boiling, but he keeps his hands where they are. The water rages, the kettle shakes. A moment later, the metal of it starts to melt, and then-- the whole thing explodes. The water splashes across his face, but it simply steams off his skin. It feels good. 

He goes back into the living room and heads towards the T.V., hoping for a spark show, when he suddenly feels it: that tug. Standing in the middle of the room, he turns to look at the sofa he’d sat on yesterday, with its pile of blankets and single pillow. As he walks over, the allure gets stronger and stronger until his fingers are almost twitching. He moves the pillow aside and there it is: the knife. Not just any knife; Daisy’s knife. He recognizes it, has seen her pull it out on more than one occasion. He picks it up and his blood immediately burns with the desire to set it ablaze. 

He wonders what it is about this object, more than anything else in this flat, that sets off his instincts. He just… wants to destroy it. He turns it over in his hands, ignoring the temptation, until he notices a tiny engraving at the bottom of the holt. 

_ Basira x  _

It must have been a gift, then? Is that it? But Martin’s car hadn’t been a gift. He remembers Martin excitedly telling them when he’d first bought it off some second-hand auction. And  _ Elias  _ certainly wasn’t a gift. The wooden holt starts smoking in his hands, and he observes in satisfaction as it sparks into flame. The yellows and oranges flicker, little by little, into a full-fledged flame. 

And then the fire alarm goes off. He groans. 

He considers what to do with himself as he steps into the sunlit car park with all the other residents of the building. He really doesn’t know. He’s been dragging himself to the Magnus Institute every day for the past couple years, fueled with both the inability to not go as well as the bitterness that that brought along with it. He feels the gaping absence of that bitterness, right now. He stopped the Stranger’s ritual, he got revenge for Danny. Shouldn’t he feel more satisfied? He’s still angry, of course, but it’s so aimless. He still hates the Institute, and all it stands for. He still hates this messy world of supernatural fears he’s been dragged into. He still hates Elias, of course, and maybe he would be more driven to hunt him down if it weren’t for--

If it weren’t for Jon. And Daisy, he supposes. Basira seems convinced that his cobbled together half-memories are proof enough of her survival. Tim’s not convinced. But Jon… 

“Hey, sorry, are there any buses around here that go to St Barts?” he asks one of the other residents. She tells him and, without really deciding it, he finds himself leaving for the hospital Martin told him Jon was being kept at. He doesn't really know what he's expecting to find. They'd ended on a positive note, maybe, after so many months of hostility and distrust. Tim doesn't know what to do in the aftermath of that. There wasn't supposed to be an aftermath. The thought is tinged with bitterness, which is familiar, at least. 

As soon as he steps into the hospital, he's almost knocked off his feet. There's something in the air, something his blood responds to, like in Martin’s car but so much more jarring. It’s like discordant notes being played over each other, and it grates on the inside of his skull as much as it lights his blood on fire. Taking a deep breath, he tries to block it out. He feels jittery as he heads towards the counter, off-balance. 

The receptionist points him towards a private ward at the back of the hospital. He doesn’t take any lifts, and the closer he gets to Jon’s room, the stranger he feels. He’s vaguely aware, in the back of his head, that maybe he should leave. It’s not like it was at the Institute, when he was fueled by some sort of blind rage, but this muddled feeling is oppressive just the same. It can only be trouble. He should turn around, he thinks, as he sees the door to Jon’s hospital room, he should call Martin, he should turn around, he should leave. He should leave, he thinks, as he pushes open the door to the room. He can’t, though. He can’t. 

The curtains are half-open, and a golden box of sunlight spills over Jon’s still body on the hospital bed. There's a bouquet of flowers on the table next to him. He’s not hooked up to any machines, and there are no bandages or drips attached to him. With his eyes shut and his hair carefully combed and gathered to the side of his head on the pillow, he looks as if he might just be sleeping, like there’s nothing wrong with the world. Like this is three years ago, like they’re still in research and Tim’s found Jon napping his lunch hour away amongst the reference books in the corner of the library. 

He walks closer, uncertainly. Jon’s skin is brown and smooth, conspicuously free of marks, like it hasn’t been for so long. For a while after the attack, when they were both new to these matching marks, Tim had thought it could be something to connect them. Something to commiserate together, to find comfort in. Maybe they could even trade tips and tricks to stop the itching, which had plagued him every night for months. It occurs to him that Jon must have gone through the same. Funny how little time there had been for commiseration when Jon was busy losing his mind to suspicion and paranoia. 

Jon’s marks are gone now, and so are Tim’s. They died. Tim had gotten his revenge, and Jon had looked at him with his glowing, inhuman eyes, and reminded him of the detonator in his hand. It occurs to Tim, for the first time, that Jon could never have known he was going to survive. He thought he was killing himself, alongside Tim’s revenge. Of course he did. Tim feels so stupid for not realizing that-- for not thinking about it. It’s stupid, and pointless, and insane. Jon’s death would have done nothing, solved nothing. Jon should have stopped Tim. Jon should have been angry, that Tim went off-script, that Tim was ready to let the world burn for his own revenge. Jon should have tried to escape. 

He didn’t, though. He let Tim have that, and Tim was so grateful, and Tim hated him so much for that, on top of everything else. He was stupid, and never angry at the right time, or the right person, and heavy with a guilt like a double-edged sword that hurt everyone in his vicinity. Tim hated him, lying prone and peaceful on the white sheets, bathed in sublimating sunlight. Tim hated him, glaring at him from across the office, breaking into his property, tainting his ordinary life with scrutiny and surveillance. Tim hated him, turning his luminescent eyes to him across the chaos, reminding him of his name, asking,  _ What’s in your hand? What do you see? Tim, what’s in your hand? What’s in your hand, Tim? Tim, what’s in your hand?  _

It’s the bedsheet, clenched. It’s smoke, as it scorches under his fingertips. The air around him is acrid and heavy. The bedframe, where it presses against his belly, begins to melt. Tim doesn’t understand what’s happening, his other hand reaching out to clench at the collar of Jon’s hospital gown. It sparks. His whole body is shaking, his chest is aching, but his blood is alive with the desire to  _ burn _ . He doesn’t notice the smoke gathering in the room, or the curtains catching light. Alarms are blaring all around him, and the sprinklers spring to life, drenching everything in the room. The water does nothing to assuage the flames, though, as Tim’s knees dip the mattress next to Jon’s still body. Hysterically, hopelessly, he needs to be close, close,  _ close _ . His trembling hand brushes, just barely, against the skin of Jon’s collarbone. It gently pinks. The bedsheet has caught fire. He grazes his fingers along the side of Jon’s neck, feels the way the soft skin begins to blister. The pillowcase is smouldering. His fingertips are at his jaw, pressing burns into the new skin. He feels hysterical and, horribly, terrifyingly alive.

“Tim!” Elias’ voice, imbued with white-noise power and panicked desperation, cuts above the roar of the flames. “Tim! You’re going to kill him!” 

The sound of his voice lights rage somewhere deep inside Tim. How dare he be here, now? How  _ dare  _ he?

Tim’s eyes open, and what shifts into focus is Jon's still gently sleeping profile on the pillow next to him. His skin is tinged orange from the flames around them, getting steadily closer and closer. He looks like a saint in a painting, haloed golden and bright. His own head is fuzzy, empty of everything except an intense, overpowering sense of satisfaction. That this is right. That this is how it should end. 

"-oker!  _ Tim! _ " It's Elias' hand grasping his shoulder with enough force to physically drag him half-off the hospital bed that snaps his attention back to the other man. Tim fumbles before grabbing onto the bedside table to regain his balance. The bouquet of flowers is on fire. 

"What the fuck are you doing here?" Tim yells, the previous satisfaction compounding with the fury to leave him disconcerted, insane. Elias is soaked through, his blond hair plastered to his head and his usually immaculate suit burnt and torn in places. Elias ignores him as he pulls off his suit jacket and throws it over Jon's far arm, where the blanket has caught fire and is-- Tim realizes now-- burning his skin. Elias is trying to put the fire out. 

Tim lunges at him, doubly enraged, fire blazing up his arms. He grabs onto Elias' shoulders, throwing them both onto the end of the bed. Elias yells out in pain, and Tim basks in the feeling of his skin melting under Tim's hands. That is until Elias elbows him, hard, straight in the windpipe, and Tim falls back, gasping. Elias takes the opportunity to turn around and kick him, hard, and Tim goes tumbling off the bed and into the flames. 

And then he feels that uncomfortable pressure pushing into his skull, like a knife slicing into his brain and ripping him open. He holds his head, writhing at the pain and discomfort of the intrusion, right there on the hospital floor among the flames. 

"You don't even know what you're doing," Elias says, with an air of disbelieving realisation, probably as he pulls the motive straight from Tim's jumbled mind, "You  _ idiot!  _ You were going to burn him alive and you don't even know why!" 

"Shut up!" Tim yells, the pain of intrusion like being split in half, "Get out of my head!" The fire blazes around him, and he's trying to figure out how to aim it at Elias, but he doesn't know, he never learned, and besides his head is in too much agony to focus on anything except the all consuming pain. Still, he tries, and the fires burn steadily higher and higher. 

"Tim, you can't kill me," Elias says, as Tim drags himself through the pain to sit up on his knees. He can see Elias on the bed, from this angle, leaning protectively over Jon, shielding him from the flames. His eyes are glowing that same deep, neon green as Jon's did during the Unknowing, those beacons of familiarity that dragged him back into himself. Elias' voice is tinged with wonder and slow-unraveling triumph. "You won't."

His confidence is like gasoline to Tim's rage. 

"Why the hell not?" Tim grinds out, willing the flames to turn to the bed, to blister and blacken the man until he's nothing but a pile of ash and smoke in the middle of the room. They listen. They creep nearer, and catch onto Elias' sleeve. Impatiently, he tries to pat them away. 

"Because Jon will die, you buffoon!" Elias says, giving up and pulling his shirt off. There's an air of panic under his careless front, and Tim can sense it. He's scared. "If I die, Jon dies. You  _ know  _ this." 

"I was already going to--"  _ I was already going to kill him.  _ He can't say it out loud, because it's insane, and not something he'd do, and he knows that, he  _ knows  _ that, but he--

"I know, but if he dies when I die, then he's not dying in your arms, is he, little desolation avatar?" Elias sneers, his eyes cutting, his mouth twisted in derision, "Oh? What's the shock for? Or have you not realised that the more someone treasures something, the more you want to destroy it?"

"Shut up," Tim says, reeling. That can't be right. But Martin’s car. Daisy's knife. Then… Jon… 

"You tell me! I thought you hated him," Elias says, his voice low and goading. Mocking. 

"I do!" Tim retorts. He does. He  _ does _ .

"Then why does the thought of burning him alive fill you with such satisfaction, Tim? You were going to crawl into his sickbed and destroy him-"

"Shup  _ up _ !"

"--if I hadn't made it in time you would have done it already. This is who you are now."

"I want to destroy you too!" Tim shouts back, pushing himself to his feet. The flames are waning, ever so slowly, "And I don't feel anything but hate for you."

"Is that right," Elias snorts, "You're a creature of emotion now, Tim. I guess you always have been, I guess I never really cared enough to notice. But it's all the same, isn't it? Love, hate? The instinct to consume serves your god all the same. Don’t be so surprised. Look at you, you’re already trying to figure out how to get me away from him. You’ve figured out I want nothing but to protect him, and it’s making you furious.”

“You’re lying,” Tim spits, “You don’t care about him.” Tim knows. Elias doesn’t care about Jon-- didn’t care about him when he was kidnapped, when he was being hunted, when he was on the run. Neither did Tim, he tells himself. It doesn’t make sense that either of them would now. And yet…

“And yet you can sense it,” Elias smiles. To Tim’s frustration, the flames keep abating. He tries to keep them up, but they don’t listen to him. He tries to reach across the bed for Elias, but this close to Jon, the pull is overwhelming, and he can't bring himself to look at Jon without wanting to--

"--burn him?" Elias says, "But why are you even hesitating? You didn't hesitate in Basira’s apartment. You didn't hesitate with Martin's oh-so-precious tape. You really didn’t hesitate with that poor firefighter-- or did you forget about her? Do you not even want to know what happened to her? She’s still suffering, you know. In the ICU of this very hospital. She’ll survive, but never work again, I imagine. Might be worse than death, for someone like her.” 

“Stop it,” Tim says, as he backs away from the bed. With distance the overwhelming bloodrush reduces, and in its place is a shockingly blank mind, with nothing to fill it but Elias’ smooth, pragmatic voice. The fires keep dwindling, the only ones actively blazing now being the curtains on the far side of the room. Tim’s head is spinning.

Elias pauses, and Tim thinks it’s finally over. When he looks up, however, Elias’ green eyes sear directly into his skull. He’s still standing protectively over Jon’s body, but his face isn’t accusative, just curious. Examining. 

“Though it's not like you've never killed anyone before, is it,” he murmurs, soft, “Do you want to know the blast radius of your becoming? The number of family homes on that street?” 

“Please stop,” Tim gasps, as the memories crash over him, the desolate wasteland he’d woken up in the middle of, the rubble, the ashes, the ruined lives. People, animals, wildlife,  _ children _ . The sprinklers are still going, and he almost slips on the wet floor before catching himself on the door jamb. “ _ Please _ .”

“Do you even care?" 

Of course he cares! Of course he cares. 

He hadn’t, though. Not until this conversation. Not until this moment. He hadn’t cared. It feels almost incomprehensible, now, standing before Elias’ all-seeing eyes, before Jon’s vulnerable body, how much he hadn’t cared. He thinks back to Martin’s devastated eyes. Basira, clutching that engraved knife through fitful sleep. The firefighter; the way she had screamed. 

Even in this moment, though, as wretched as he feels, as incomprehensibly cruel, he can’t deny that the memories spark a burst of pleasure under his skin. The realisation makes him feel sick. A rush of guilt surges to take over it, and all he’s left with is a mess of emotion he can’t parse or hope to categorize. Everything is so horribly overwhelming. Tears sting at his eyes and when they spill onto his cheeks, for the first time since he woke up, they don’t sizzle off his skin. They simply trail down his cheeks. 

He looks up at Elias. Elias follows the path of the tears with his eyes. There’s silence for a moment, before he turns back to Jon on the bed. He checks Jon over, methodically examining his body before reaching his neck. Tim watches intently as he trails his hands over the raised burns along Jon’s neck, under his jaw. Tim can’t see from this angle, but he knows they’re shaped like Tim’s fingerprints. He feels a flush of pleasure until his mind catches up, and then it’s immediately drowned out by all-consuming shame. Elias, thankfully, doesn’t say anything, but he seems content with Jon’s well-being for the moment. He turns towards Tim. 

“Do you finally trust that I do, in fact, have Jon’s best interests in mind?” he asks, a hint of amusement in his voice. “And, as such, the world’s?” He comes to a stop just out of Tim’s reach. Tim remembers the knowledge of Elias’ fear, back at the archives. He thinks of the desperation with which he’d burst into the hospital room and pulled Tim off Jon. Tim is keenly, inescapably aware of the fresh burn marks on Elias’ back. 

And exactly who put them there, of course. On Elias, on the firefighter, on  _ Jon _ , on all those people whose lives he had destroyed. On this whole hospital nearly. Without a second thought. With nothing but… quiet pleasure. 

Tim swallows down the nausea with the guilt before the blaze of it engulfs him. He looks into Elias’ glittering, eerie eyes, and finally nods. 

“Good. Come on then,” he says, and walks past Tim through the door. Tim looks back into the room. All the fire has cleared, and in its wake is the charred, burned remains of the hospital room: tatters where the curtains used to be, metal rehardened into strange shapes on the floor, and the flowers on Jon’s bedside burnt to crisps, ready to fall apart at the first touch. In the centre of it all, lying as peacefully as ever in the ashes of Tim’s mess, is Jon’s sleeping body. Tim breathes in the smoke, and follows Elias through the door. 


End file.
